The disclosure generally relates to the field of mobile communication, in particular to phone call filtering based on priority.
Mobile phones have become part of everyday life, and their usage is on the rise. As a result, more and more mobile phone users treat their mobile phones as their primary phones. Because most mobile phone users carry their mobile phones with them, they can receive phone calls all the time. However, mobile phone users may not want to be interrupted by unimportant phone calls during certain periods of time (e.g., business meetings, family dinners, or sleeping time).
Traditionally, mobile phone users filter phone calls by manually screening the callers. For example, a mobile phone user may determine whether to answer an incoming call by checking the phone number of the caller. If the user deems the incoming call unimportant (e.g., with low priority) and decides not to answer it, he or she may press a button on the mobile phone to terminate (or mute) the incoming call. This process is interruptive because phone rings (or vibrations) alerting the phone calls are distractive (e.g., waking users up), and users must manually operate the mobile phone to filter the phone calls.
Alternatively, mobile phone users may turn off (or mute) their mobile phones to avoid interruptions caused by unimportant phone calls. However, this approach blindly and indiscriminately blocks all income calls, including important ones (e.g., phone calls with high priority) that the users intend to answer. As a result, mobile phone users risk the unintended consequence of missing important phone calls.
From the above, there is a need in the art for a system and method for filtering phone calls with minimal user intervention.